After Seau findings, what’s next for NFL?

With news that Junior Seau suffered from CTE, league will be facing greater scrutiny

FILE - In this Aug. 14, 2006, file photo, former San Diego Chargers football player Junior Seau smiles during a news conference announcing his retirement from pro football in San Diego. Seau, a former NFL star, was found dead at his home in Oceanside, Calif. He was 43. (AP Photo/Sandy Huffaker, File)
— AP

FILE - In this Aug. 14, 2006, file photo, former San Diego Chargers football player Junior Seau smiles during a news conference announcing his retirement from pro football in San Diego. Seau, a former NFL star, was found dead at his home in Oceanside, Calif. He was 43. (AP Photo/Sandy Huffaker, File)
/ AP

Mary Ann Easterling wasn’t surprised that the analysis of the brain tissue of beloved Chargers linebacker Junior Seau revealed abnormalities consistent with a form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

The neuropathologists consulting with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) discovered abnormal small clusters called neurofibrillary tangles of a protein known as tau within multiple regions of Seau’s brain, as Easterling suspected they would.

Tau is a normal brain protein that folds into masses in the brain cells of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and a number of other progressive neurological disorders.

Why was she so sure?

Only 13 days before Seau, 43, took his life, Eastlering’s husband Ray, 62, a former safety with the Atlanta Falcons, had committed suicide. His tragic act had brought an abrupt end to more than two decades of a living, crazy, confusing hell, as Ray wrestled with insomnia, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, emotional detachment, mood swings, financial crises and other issues, and she struggled to be his devoted caregiver. Finally, in 2010, doctors connected Ray’s erratic behavior to the brain trauma he had suffered while playing football. Three months before his death, he was diagnosed with dementia. An autopsy of his brain revealed CTE.

“While you can’t speculate on somebody’s life, because the people around Junior were saying that his suicide came as such a surprise, that he hadn’t had any documented concussions in the NFL and that the initial coroner’s report hadn’t seen anything visibly unusual, I thought they’d find CTE,” Easterling said. “Why? Because Junior’s behavior was just like Ray’s.

“But you have to live with somebody to be able to tell they’ve got it. Football players are so good at covering up, bravado and making things seem like they’re not. It’s a personality unlike any other. They’ll regale you with stories, but at the same time, their families will say, as Junior’s kids did, ‘But we have to tell him five times when our game was so he’d be there. And he’d still forget.’ ”

Seau is biggest name

This past week’s announcement that the NIH study had found CTE in Seau’s brain tissue made him the latest, and most prominent, athlete to be associated with the brain disease, which has haunted the sport of football, and the NFL, in particular, in recent years as mounting research studies have exposed the possible long-term cognitive impact of head injuries sustained on the playing field.

Since CTE was diagnosed in the brain of former Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Andre Waters after his suicide in 2006, the disease has been found in nearly every former player whose brain was examined posthumously. (Currently, CTE can be diagnosed only posthumously.) That includes former Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson, who committed suicide in February 2011, shooting himself in the chest to preserve his brain and leaving behind a suicide note that read, “Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL’s brain bank.”

Researchers at Boston University, who are pioneering the study of CTE, have discovered it in 33 of the 34 brains of former NFL players they have examined.